Why People Join and Leave the Twelve Tribes

Overview

• Thousands of people have joined the Twelve Tribes Communities over the last 50+ years, often drawn by shared social and spiritual ideals.

• Many have exited the Tribes as well, including some leadership (and family members of leadership). Entire communities in the Twelve Tribes have closed, as members leave or are relocated.

• Some former members have written books, given interviews, created videos, and contributed to documentaries. Yet, leaving the Tribes is often very difficult for specific reasons.

Common Reasons for Joining

Aesthetic

• Many members were drawn to the Tribes due to its communal “folk” lifestyle, natural aesthetic, and “common sense” values.

Shelter

• Some join the Tribes in order to find structure for their chaotic lives, or to seek a refuge from the problems of society.

Parental Support

• Some see the Tribes as an alternative supportive environment to raise their children.

Pursuit of God

• Some join specifically for spiritual reasons. They may find the theological perspectives the Tribes to be appealing.

• Other arrive in pursuit of a religious outlet to satisfy spiritual yearnings that were not satisfied by prior membership in other religious groups.

Common Reasons for Leaving

Disillusionment

• Former members often report a disconnect between the Tribes’ internal practices and the values that they so strongly promote.

• Integrity issues become more difficult to accept when they include leadership, or when leadership responds poorly to such issues.

Suffering

• Former members sometimes report negative consequences of their membership in the Tribes.

• Common concerns include: being overworked, child abuse, experiencing injustices, unaddressed medical concerns, and forced separation from family members.

Forced Exits (Expulsion)

• The Tribes will occasionally “send away” members due to behavioral issues or due to independent thinking.

• If the member is under the age of 18, a parent will go with the child until the parent can find a new guardian for the child, and then the parent will return to the Tribes.

• However, if the Tribes deems the child’s problems are caused by poor parenting, then the parents may be sent away as well.

Decision & Authority

• The Tribes makes decisions about almost every aspect of its members lives, including: where to live, how to spend time, what to wear, what to eat, how to think, and what work to do.

• Members are taught to “submit” to the decisions made by leadership, but submitting to hurtful decisions can be difficult.

• Former members sometimes report that they left because they lacked freedom to make personal choices that were important to them.

Theological Convictions

• Those who join the Tribes do not initially learn all the beliefs of the Tribes.

• Over time, some come to believe that the Tribes’ teachings & practices actually aren’t aligned with Scripture.

The Difficulty of Leaving

Consequences

• Members are taught that exiting the group will result in various types of tragedies to their safety, lifestyle, and/or health

• The Tribes often reinforces this fear by telling stories of tragic events that have supposedly happened to ex-members.

Eternal Punishment

• Members are told that if they leave then they will go to hell (“Lake of Fire”) after dying.

Structure & Provision

• Members who grew up in the Tribes often struggle to know how to function in society apart from the group since they have never lived independently.

• The Tribes have done extensive outreach to those who are “lost” in society and were struggling to function on their own. Some who joined as adults arrived during times of hardship or addiction, relying entirely on the group’s daily structure and shelter.

• While some members may secretly disbelieve the Tribes’ doctrines, they still feel a need for the structure and provision that the Tribes offer.

Relationships

• Due to the practice of shunning, leaving the Tribes usually causes severed relationships with family members and friends who remain in the Tribes.

• Children (and young adults) fear leaving because their relationship with their parents would be severed.

• Parents often stay for the same reason: if only one parent wants to leave, the Tribes have been known to move the kids (and remaining parent) to a different location to prevent the departing parent from taking the kids out of the Tribes.

Finances

• Individual ownership of money is non-existent in the Tribes (apart from some leadership, who may have property in their name).

• Because of this, it is a challenge to provide for oneself after leaving. Some who join the group simply has no outside support system to rely on, and they would have nowhere to go if they left the group.

Beliefs & Identity

• The choice to leave the Tribes is a choice to discard some major core beliefs of the Tribes. Strongly-held (and long-held) beliefs can be difficult to forsake, and major changes in worldview can be disorienting.

• Group-think runs strong in the Tribes and members are trained to reject individual thinking.¹ This dynamic hinders a member from initiating the thought of leaving.

• Members often learn to put up a strong mental wall against outside perspectives. They are trained to share outside input with whoever is supervising them, which ends up hindering them from independent thought.

• Further, self-identity is closely connected with Tribes’ membership, and so departure from membership can leave former members struggling to establish a new understanding of themselves.

Footnotes

1. The Tribes often use the phrase: “It’s better to be wrong together than to be right alone.” This becomes acceptable to members because they ultimately see the Tribes itself as the source of salvation, rather than salvation being tied to objective truth or Jesus Himself. As the Tribes have written: “All servants of God must be delivered from a life of reason… Reasoning is rebellion in its highest form.” [Reasoning, 11/18/90] ↩